Helen Lowe's Blog, page 227

Tuesday Poem: “To Autumn” by John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

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Who hath not...

Celebrating Adventure In “The Gathering of The Lost”

UK/AUS/NZ

With the mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost recently published in the UK, I’ve been re-posting a few of the features from last year’s Blog Tour.

This article was first published on Phillipa Ballantine and Tee Morris’s The Shared Desk blog—and because they are steampunk authors, I have contrasted and compared adventurous storytelling in the epic fantasy and steampunk milieux.

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“Love of Adventure: The Crossover Between Steampunk Tales & Epic Stories

Adventure is definitely o...

A Book Quote For Sunday, From James Baldwin

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

~ James Baldwin

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To learn more about James Baldwin, click here for his Wikipedia entry.

22 Rules of Storytelling by Emma Coates (A Former Pixar Storyboard Artist)

Last week, fellow SpecFicNZ-er, Mark English, drew my attention to the following article:

22 Rules of Storytelling by a Pixar Storyboard Artist

The 22 rules are attributed to Former Pixar storyboard artist, Emma Coates, and have apparently been collated from her tweets.

Anyway, I think they constitute a very interesting list, and the following particularly resonate:

Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it.
Simplify. Focus. Combi...

A Geography of Haarth: Argent

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth series features locales and places from The Wall of Night series’ world of Haarth.

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“Argent: one the main rivers of Emer, in the Southern Realms of Haarth.”

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“The countryside they rode through was a far cry from the emptiness of the Northern March. Whitewashed homes, some roofed with deep thatch and others with lichened tiles, were dotted amongst fields divided by neat hedgerows. Each house had its garden and orc...

Read & Enjoyed: “Days of Blood and Starlight” by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012; 513 pp)

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.”

When I did a “Just Arrived” for this book in November (and you will find the back cover synopsis there), I confessed to having read and enjoyed the first book Daughter of Smoke and Bone last year but forgotten to blog about it: mea culpa indeed!

When you read the second in a series, espe...

Romance vs Reality: War & Conflict in Epic Fantasy and “The Gathering of the Lost”

UK/AUS/NZ

With the mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost recently published in the UK, I’ve been re-posting a few of the features from last year’s Blog Tour.

This post was first published on Australian author Trent Jamieson’s Trentonomicon blog, but since Trent has subsequently revamped his previous blog and started anew, it is now only available here.

I also feel it complements my recent post on my UK publisher Orbit’s blog (although the content is different): War and Power—Sources o...

Tuesday Poem: “Home Thoughts From Abroad” by Robert Browning

Home Thoughts From Abroad

Oh, to be in England

Now that April ‘s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows –

Hark! where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray’s edge...

Read and Enjoyed: “Dearie–The Remarkable Life of Julia Child” by Bob Spitz

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz (Knopf, 2012; 529 pp)

This book, a biography of American food writer and pioneering television cook, was one of my Christmas presents. As I wrote on January 20th:

“It’s an impressive looking book and I loved the film Julie: Julia so am going to be very interested to see if my interest in food and in Julia Child will see me through the 529 pages, given biography is generally not my vein of reading gold.”

The verdict is that I did enjoy the b...

So What Are You Reading?

So yesterday I talked about having have Frost Burned, the very latest in Patricia Briggs‘ Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series as the latest ‘hot off the press’ item on my TBR table.

But how about you? What are you reading right now, or hoping to get to soon on your ‘to-be-read’ table?

And any hot tips for your best read so far for 2013?